When this little chestnut stumbles into your timeline, you scroll through the internet with care about your business. “1980 and 2023 are about as far apart as 1937 and 1980.
Wait, what? Your first response is, “That’s not the right thing,” so you pull out the calculator and do your math yourself. I remember how long ago it looked in 1937 in 1980, but there is absolutely no way that much time passed between 1980 and 2023. As the reality of distorted thyme washes you away, you sit in a shocked silence, thinking of the existential crisis you have been thrown into the present.
Why does time work like this? Why do we seem faster, faster and more condensed to make it look shorter and shorter for decades as we get older? And perhaps more importantly, What on earth do you think it feels like a runaway freight train??
Below are some theories about what creates a freight train phenomenon and what to do about it.
The perception of time is relative, and the child perceives it differently
The saying is because “time when you’re having fun is flying.” Also, time drags over when you’re doing a difficult job and feels like you’re still standing in key moments. Still, the click of a few seconds as they pass by doesn’t change the tempo. We measure it with a stable, constant beat, but how it feels changes constantly.
Children’s time moves slowly.Photo credit: Canva
This relativity exists at every moment, but also in large pictures. When we were kids it felt like they were passing by so slowly. In middle-aged people, they feel like they are passing by the blink of an eye. The pandemic has given us an even greater sense of relativity as the confusion of our normal routines and the stress associated with Covid-19, which has been messed up with our sense of time. (A strange note, Research shows that our perception of time during the pandemic has been very different from place to place– People in some parts of the world felt that time moved more slowly, while others felt that time moved faster.
According to a 2023 Hungarian study Featured in Nature Scientific ReportsVery young children perceive different times than older children and adults. The researchers showed two videos for the same period, with 138 people divided into three age groups: kindergarten, school age, and adults aged 18 and older. Interestingly, the Pre-K group felt the eventful videos would be longer, but older children and adults watched the peaceful videos longer.
They also communicated how research participants explained the length of the gesture video. Young children were much more likely to use vertical hand gestures, meaning volume or size, to indicate time than the other two age groups. School-age children and adults tended to use horizontal gestures, indicating that time was linear and increased with age.
Our nerve processing slows down with age
Professor Adrian Bejan has a theory based on how neurons process signals. With age, neural networks increase in size and complexity, resulting in slower processing of visual information. Slow processing means there are fewer mental images per second than when you were younger, which makes time seem slower.
Women age slowly for more than 15 years.assets.rebelmouse.io
“People are often amazed at how much they remember when they were young and it seemed to last forever, Bejang. Shared with Harvard University. “It’s not that their experience is much deeper and more meaningful. It’s just that they were being treated by a rapid fire.”
In other words, processing the same number of mental images we did in young people now takes time. Anyway, the same goes for theory.
It may simply be about the ratio of realization time to life
Another general theory of why time feels different from adulthood is when we are a child is the ratio of the days, years and years of the year we lived. Up to age 5, one year is 20% of your life. At 50, it feels like you’ve passed faster, as only one year is 0.2% of your life.
Elderly hand holding a small clock.Photo credit: Canva
It also refers to how much change occurred that year. A year of life at a 5 year old is full of rapid growth, change, learning and development. A year of 50 years of life is probably not much different than when you were 48 or 49 years old. Even with major life changes, middle-aged brains are not evolving at almost the same rate as children. Looking back at the past year, 50-year-olds seem to have gone much faster in the year, as they change the process much less than their 5-year-olds.
“Our perception of days, weeks, years, and times like that seems to be particularly influenced by our perspective. Is it the moment we are experiencing it or are we on time?” Psychology professor Cindy Rustich told the University of Michigan.
The key to slowing it all down? Beware of the present moment.
Lustig has points. When we are at this point, our perception of time is very different from when we look back. Therefore, being fully aware of the present moment will help to reduce the effectiveness of freight trains.
One way to do that is to pay attention to your physical presence at this moment. Feel your heart beating. Feel your breath coming and going. Professor of Psychology at Cornell University Adam AndersonPhD, implementation the study It discovered that our perception of time may be linked to the length of our heartbeat. (The study participants were equipped with an ECG and were asked to listen to a simple audio tone. They felt the tone longer after a longer heartbeat, shorter after a shorter.) He suggests starting a stopwatch, closing his eyes, focusing on your breathing, and feeling a little bit. Next, check your time to see how accurate your estimate is.
Breathe World Series GIFs by MLBGiffy
“This allows you to feel how much your body experience relates to your time experience.” Anderson told WebMD. “It helps to teach you to enjoy the pure experience of time.”
You can also use focused breathing to intentionally slow your heart rate and slow your perception of time. “It shows that your heart rate is slower, that is, the length between your heartbeats is longer, reducing the time and slowing it down,” Anderson said.
You can also change your perception of time by photographing new experiences, such as traveling to new places. According to Steve Taylor, author of Time to make: Why does it seem like time passes at different speeds and how to control itPeople who continue adventure Travel reports that their vacation feels longer than those who choose predictable destinations. You can also make small changes Daily routinesuch as trying new foods, getting home from work and getting new stimuli, or slowing down your perception of time.
a I’ll study in 2024 People who do intense exercise experience time warp and feel like they are exercising longer than they actually are, so if you want to temporarily reduce the amount of time, you can push your body harder during workouts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aix2n-vinwy-YouTubeYoutu.be
Finally, take them into the world like you were a little kid. Beware of the wonders of life. Be completely involved in anything you do. Focus on the details and take as much mental photos as possible. It takes time when you’re distracted, so here and now you can pay attention. Ultimately, we can strive to perceive more time, as we did, not in narrow straight lines, but in its perfect depth and size when we were little.
This article was originally published last year.
